Category: Is It Still

Clint Eastwood turns 85 this month. In recent years he’s become an increasingly odd character. With his talking to chairs, questionable directorial choices, and general “grumpy old man” demeanor, it’s easy to forget that Eastwood used to be a universal symbol of masculinity and general badassery. There was a time when his squinty-eyed stubbornness was seen as a trait of his stoic heroism, and less of his confusion brought on by his failing memory in old age. Taking a look back at Don Siegel’s 1971 cop thriller, Dirty Harry, it’s easy to see why Eastwood was once such a notable icon of manliness. From the first opening shots of Dirty Harry, filmed in Panavision, it is made explicitly clear that the film is a product of its time. The score of the film, the look of it, and even the camera movements, somehow, scream of the early 1970s. The film looks so dated at parts that the whole thing begins to come across as if it is a low-budget exploitation flick. Even the basic themes put forth in Dirty Harry are birthed out of the times. The film came along at the tail end of the freewheeling 1960s and at the very beginning of a much more rigid and much more paranoid 1970s. America was still covered in the blood of Vietnam. Kent State was behind us and Watergate...